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Toronto has 29 positions now. Seventeen of them have received their pink slips. That leaves 12.

The father of Ahmed Hassan is consoled; Toronto's poorest teenagers need the role models and the chance at jobs that outreach work offers, writes Catherine Porter. (MARK BLINCH / REUTERS)

Twelve people to reach out to all the troubled youth of Toronto.

If I didn’t know any better, I’d think Mayor Ford was being sarcastic.

I see why he wants to build a bigger fence around his house.

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Councillor Adam Vaughan says he could use all 29 youth outreach workers in Alexandra Park — a social housing complex tucked below Kensington Market near Spadina and Dundas.

That’s where Ahmed Hassan’s mother lives. Hassan was shot dead in the Eaton Centre last weekend. A few hours before that shooting, another gunman — still at large — opened fire inside the housing complex.

I dropped by Wednesday morning and chatted with Ali Jimaleh, one of the neighbourhood’s youth-workers-in-training. We sat on a bench behind the Scadding Court Community Centre where he works.

Jimaleh’s life hasn’t been easy or pure. He came to Canada at age 7, fleeing the war in Somalia with his father and siblings. They were nomadic for years, moving with his dad’s jobs, until Jimaleh settled in with some cousins in Alexandra Park. He dropped out of school in Grade 11.

“My dad’s a diabetic. His health was bad. Bills needed to be paid. Food needed to be put on the table,” said Jimaleh, now 26.

He worked as a dishwasher, a waiter, a concession stand worker, and a factory hand making vinyl siding, until he settled down to selling crack.

“You can find drugs easier than you can find a job,” he said. “On a good night, I’d make $1000 or $2000.”

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Problems followed. “I started having issues with certain people. Fights became stabbings, stabbings ended up as shootings,” he said. “So I picked up a gun.”

Police stopped him one night and, finding the gun, sent him to jail for a year and a half.

A few weeks after he emerged, Jimaleh was back in Alexandra Park, again selling crack. He was smoking a cigarette outside his cousin’s house one morning when the Scadding Court Community youth worker approached him. The community centre was organizing a three-month youth development program in India, the worker told him. Would Jimaleh like to join?

That trip changed Jimaleh’s life. After he returned, Scadding Court hired him to manage the next trip. That job lead to another and another. Now, he’s running the nearby school’s breakfast and after-school programs. Next week, he’ll start training counselors for summer camp. He works a weekend job dry-walling to make extra money. He moved into his own apartment in the Annex.

“Did I see myself in this position a couple years back? No. I didn’t think I’d make it this long,” he said. “Give somebody an opportunity and watch the change.”

While we were sitting there chatting, city councillors a few blocks away were publicly aghast to discover the Eaton Centre shooter was working at a city-run after school recreation program. They announced all employees need to clear criminal background checks before starting work from now on.

But aren’t the kids with checkered pasts just the ones we want in these jobs? Jimaleh seems like a perfect role model for kids in Alexandra Park to me — someone who knows both the gang and straight world and can tell them honestly which one is better.

Scadding Court Community Centre makes a point of hiring and training local kids with criminal records — 50 of them over the past 4 years. Executive director Kevin Lee considers it a crime prevention program, and so does the federal government, which funds it.

Had that youth outreach worker not approached Jimaleh on the street that day, who knows what would have happened? That’s the thing about crime prevention — it’s hard to measure.

“Wouldn’t it be better to recruit kids to summer jobs in parks and recreation than gangs?” Councillor Pam McConnell said yesterday.

She’s pushing city council to reinstate those 17 youth outreach workers before the summer starts. Summer, typically, is the time when tempers and guns flare in this city.

Mayor Ford, consider this a postcard from Alexandra Park. We need more than walls and police officers to stop crime. Teenagers in poor neighbourhoods need role models and chances.

Catherine Porter’s column usually appears on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. She can be reached at cporter@thestar.ca

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